"Ugh..." Sarah thought to herself.
School started a week earlier than normal this year and she had to get the kids up, dressed, fed and on the bus and still get ready herself in time to meet a client at 10AM!
Neither child responded when she called out to them to get up, so she bounded up the stairs to the bedrooms and knocked on doors.
Her son Bradley was old enough to get himself up and ready without being prompted by "Mom", but he was used to sleeping in during the summer months.
She knocked harder, "BRADLEY! Up and at 'em! You're going to be late!"
Sarah knocked on her daughter's door HARDER. She was the older of the two kids and Sarah knew she was a sound sleeper.
"C'mon Pris -- WAKE UP!"
She heard her daughter groan and mutter something -- she was at that age when everything that came out of her mouth was indistinguishable from guttural animal sounds or mumbling.
Sarah went back downstairs and poured a cup of coffee while she planned her day. Once the kids were out of the house and on the bus, she could get a quick run on the treadmill and then a shower and be out the door and over to the client's hotel in time for their meeting.
She prided herself on staying active and in shape. As a realtor, she needed to have both the energy, and the looks required for the job. She was slender and still fit, despite being almost forty -- she had played soccer in high school and through college playing for a D1 school playing as an attacking midfielder and maintained the trim body of a young player.
She was a decent 34C with brown hair a bit past her shoulders, but her legs didn't carry the bulk or thickness a lot of women in soccer carried. She was lissome and muscular, and her legs were lean. She was petite at 5'4, and varied between 110 and 115 pounds, but if asked to describe herself, she would say small but mighty.
Her day was going as planned.
The kids made the bus without crisis, and she got her run in. Stripping down, she took a shower. As the water cascaded over her face, she thought about the woman she was meeting this morning. Mrs. Devlin Davies. Sarah smiled to herself as she repeated the name.
"Mrs. Devlin Davies!" she said with some authority. She chuckled. Growing up, girls who had the same first letter in their first and last name seemed to be on the snobby side and Sarah wondered if she intentionally or subconsciously sought out someone with a last name that started with a D to maintain that status quo.
She wondered if Devlin's maiden name was something horrible like Stubbins or worse and chuckled in her head at the thought.
Truth be told, Sarah knew very little about Devlin Davies or her husband, Dr. Robert Davies.
Whenever she got a new client, one of the first things she would do was a deep dive on them on the internet -- LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, X, WhatsApp, Redditt and even people search services like Truth finder, Checkmate and BeenVerified. She couldn't find ANYTHING on either one of them! It was as if they didn't exist anywhere on the net, which is pretty rare these days. No pictures, no articles, no listings at all.
Sarah made a mental note to ask Devlin about that.
The Davies' were moving from Philadelphia down to Atlanta -- Dr. Davies' was a Cardiothoracic Surgeon and a board member in Pennsylvania and had taken a position as head of the Cardiology department of a larger healthcare entity within Atlanta proper. It would be somewhat of a cultural transition moving down south from being in the City of Brotherly Love, but Devlin had spent the last several weeks scouting the area and researching neighborhoods and communities with Sarah looking for the "perfect" home for Robert and herself.
And, over the two plus months that they had worked together, Sarah and Devlin had moved from a professional relationship to becoming friends. Devlin didn't have family in the area and outside of a couple of people she met at the hotel gym and local restaurants, Sarah was the closest thing she had to a real friend in Atlanta.
They scoured the listings and neighborhoods, visited countless houses and estates for sale and finally settled on a place that met all the requirements the couple was looking for. Upscale, modern, private, sitting on about two acres in a wooded area. It had two large decks, a swimming pool with an outdoor building that housed a changing room and shower. There was also a rather large cedar hot tub surrounded by a privacy fence and trees for the occasional nude soak.
The only problem was that the current owners were out of the country for the summer, so it had been sitting idle for a period of time. Sarah knew that when a house sits with no one flushing toilets or running water, leaks and cracks begin to form causing minor maintenance at times.
But Devlin was upbeat about the whole process and was certain this was THE home for them.
Sarah pulled up to the hotel and parked her SUV in the same familiar spot she had for weeks before -- she smiled at the doorman who held open the heavy doors into the lobby and called Devlin on her cell once in the foyer to let her know she was there.
The plan was to go to the new home and then wait for Dr. Davies to arrive. Robert was flying in that morning from Philadelphia and would meet them there to go through the house for his inspection and approval. Once he was happy with her selection, he was going to have lunch with Sarah and Devlin before flying back that afternoon to prepare for surgery scheduled for the next morning.
After she hung up from Devlin, Sarah sat on one of the big plush chairs in the hotel lobby and started going through email on her phone while she waited. A few minutes later, Devlin appeared -- she always reminded Sarah of the actress Blake Lively -- slender, statuesque, blonde. She was wearing a yellow sundress and sandals, which was a little classier than her normal fare, but Sarah knew the good doctor would be coming down for a few hours and that they hadn't seen each other for over two weeks when Devlin flew home for a visit.
"You look sexy, girl!" Sarah said.
Devlin curtsied and quipped, "This ol' thang?" in a fake southern accent that made Sarah burst out laughing. "Do you like it? More importantly, do you think it will turn Robert on?"
Sarah assured her the dress would turn any man's head which made Devlin smile.
"Let's go, then!" Devlin said..." I can't wait for Robert to see our new home...I KNOW he's going to love it!"
They got in the car and Sarah remembered that she wanted to ask Devlin about their lack of exposure on social media.
"Devlin, I've been meaning to ask you...why is it that you and Robert are absolutely ghosts on social media? Don't take this the wrong way, but part of my job is to look online for information about all my clients -- it gives me a better understanding of their personalities and likes and dislikes but when I looked for information on the two of you, there's ZERO, ZIP, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.... Not even a photograph! Is that intentional?"
Devlin frowned and thought for a minute before speaking...
"Yes, it's intentional, Sarah. Well, we USED to be all over the place and Robert read an article somewhere about how hackers and low life members of society use what they find on the web to blackmail people or rob their identities in some way. So, about a year ago, he hired a company that searches the regular internet as well as the dark web and removes any traces of your identity -- your name, address, identifying documentation, photographs of family and friends. We pay a monthly fee to have them continuously search for us everywhere and pull it from search engines and databases."
Sarah nodded -- she had heard about companies providing services like that -- evidently it cost a fortune to constantly monitor every aspect of the internet but seemed to do a good job of it.
